The Kubernetes Persistent Volume Subsystem

Introduction

The Persistent Volume Subsystem is a set of API objects that allow applications to request and access storage. It has the following resources that we’ll look at and work with:

• PersistentVolumes (PV)

• PersistentVolumeClaims (PVC)

• StorageClasses (SC)

As previously mentioned, PVs represent external volumes on Kubernetes. PVCs grant applications access to a PV. SCs allow applications to create PVs dynamically.

Let’s walk through another example.

Assume we have an external storage system with the following tiers of storage:

• Flash/SSD fast storage

• Mechanical slow storage

We expect our applications to use both types, so we create a StorageClass for each.